Believe Different, Live Different

God as Father

It seems like I am all about some bittersweet moments lately. I don’t know if that is a sign of a softer heart for me, or just more of an awareness of my own messy heart.

It is bittersweet when I find myself in those times where the same bible story seems to be every where I go, and in every other sermon. It always takes about three times before I stop and wonder why I am hearing something on repeat. That particular topic seems to creep into conversations out of no where. Now I am just at the point of chuckling.

Right now I have a top three-topic list going on right now. Among those three is the topic of God as father.

I have been camped out in John for a while. In John chapter five, Jesus has just finished healing a man on the Sabbath. Leaders in the Jewish community were not happy with what Jesus was doing. Jesus stuns this Jewish group by referring to God as his father. The Jews were outraged by the fact that Jesus would claim to be God’s son. They were also mad because Jesus was considering himself equal to the father.

Every time I have read this passage, I have just glazed over these words. Not this time. I can’t shake the fact that I think Jesus was redefining yet another relationship aspect with God. Jesus was modeling an intimate label with God. Not only that, I think Jesus was telling us that it is okay for us to call God, father. God calls us his children.

This is a bittersweet statement for me. I am so thankful for a God who wants to be known by me as father, but I have no idea what the word father really means. I don’t have good associations at all with the word “father.” This statement from Jesus feels overwhelming to me. I desire to know God the way Jesus describes him to be, but this is a relationship I just do not get. My heart feels the weight of my loss

In the past there have been great glimpses of “father figures” for me. To be honest, at times, I get so ticked that I even had to have “father figures” in my life. It reminds of the loss of a father who should have been, well a lot of things. Nonetheless, I have been blessed with great male mentors, counselors, and second homes. These are just glimpses. I still mourn the loss of knowing what father really means. I mourn understanding healthy intimacy from my father. I hate that.

I know God as provider, gracious, forgiver, savior, perfect love, leader, powerful, beautiful, and faithful. Father will always be a hard one for me.

My prayer has been for him to open my eyes to that side of who he is. I am praying for God to show himself as father to me.

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until recently, i didn’t realize how much i struggled with viewing God as my Father. choosing to face head-on the abandonment and lack of protection from my own dad has made me realize how i’ve subconsciously placed God in that same category. one reason i find it so hard to trust Him with me is because i can’t trust my dad with me.

at the same time, i know that God can supersede my natural, familial relationships. He wouldn’t call me to relate to Him in a way that is impossible for me. i want to allow His Spirit to work on this area of my heart so i can live free. so i can view Him as He deserves to be viewed. so i can interact with Him the way He created me to.

i can’t fully embrace who i am as His daughter without really getting what it means for Him to be my Father.

i have so far to go yet on this journey of mine… sigh… i’m grateful to have you journeying with me. (and can i just point out how much i love that you said “camped out”? mmhmm! ANNNND… i wanna hear the other two points on your list. just sayin.) i love you, boo!

I hate that we are struggling with the same concepts of father! GRR!! so grateful to journey with you. Thank you for talking about lots of conversations with me. I so appreciate you.

I know you get the trust barrier with me. My trust issues started there a long time ago. I hate that they still surface now. Grr. I have not see my dad is so long, yet the ghost of his choices still leave me grieving.

it was hard to fully understand Him as a Father when i first got saved. after all it was so hard in my mind to be able to love a God that had allowed me to abused as a child.

through out the years (and through trials) i’ve learned to trust His love and His heart. in fact i call Him Daddy. i talk to Him about anything and everything… and i was able to learn to have a childlike, intimate relationship with Him like that because I tell my son to do the exact same things to God and I see my son speak to his “Daddy” that way..

i long to be able to be like Jesus and spend hours in prayer just talking and being with His Father. I always wonder what it is they talked about… and what went on during their alone time together. I pray that I would have even 1/4 of the same hunger that Jesus had to want to spend hours and hours in the presence of my Daddy.

It’s so amazing that you get God as father. Seriously, I can really tell that about you. You can do it. You know that intimacy. I love that about you. That is a great example to me. I think that it’s amazing that you do. So encouraging friend!

You and I are definite kindred spirits especially when it comes to this topic. I have struggled for years to wrap my head around the concept of God as Father. I have no good earthly reference for that word and so it has been so hard for me to know God as Father.

Recently, however, God has begun to unwrap that word for my heart. I have been intentional to replace God with the phrase “Father” so instead of I felt the love of God this morning, I will say I felt the Father’s love this morning (which I did in a very profound way this morning). Making the switch and being intentional to use the term Father is redeeming that word for me and is helping me to renew my mind to the idea of God as Father. Thank you for sharing your heart with us.

Profound! I want to hear what’s that about That’s awesome!! I know you get this topic with me. We have had some conversations about this. I am so glad that you are know him more as father. Would love to know what else you are learning from this practice!

I too struggled with this for a long time, I still do to an extent. A verse that was very helpful to me was Psalm 2:7

The king says, “I will announce the LORD’s decree. He said to me: ‘You are my son! This very day I have become your father!

I learned that I don’t really need to understand He is my Father, because He just is. Not understanding something does not change the reality of it. Once I just accepted He is my Father, I began to relate to him that way.

I have come to see that He is more my Father than my earthly father, He breathed life into me, this is eternal, my earthly father gave me flesh/DNA, that is temporal and will not last.

That is a great verse. You are right that it takes a mentality shift. I am so glad that he has met you in that shift. I know that I will never fully wrap my head around him as father, I don’t need to. I would love to know what you have learned about him as specifically father.

I love thinking about your thought that he breathed life into me. That does make a father.

I’mma need to check that out! Seems to be a theme right now. I hate that people know pain with this topic. I am so glad to hear others thoughts on it at as well. It’s such an important relationship. As much as it feels foreign to me, I really want to know this side of God. He names us children. We are known to him that way, and I want to know that about him.

Been there, done that, still doing that! :) So totally get where you are. My Dad died when I was in the sixth grade in an ugly shooting accident that I will never fully know or understand the truth of. Several years prior to that, my Dad left my Mom for another woman and while he said we (my sister and I) were important to him, he chose other things and people before us often. It is heartbreaking and I realized a couple years ago that while he was broken, he was an adult and he made these choices and they weren’t about me. I spent alot of my life assuming God is like my earthly father. He’s not. I am learning that truth in pieces (sometimes large chunks and sometimes little bits) … and, it is so worth the journey. Your journey is worth it, too.

Thank you for telling some of your story. I get some of that grief too well. I hate that your father left you with doubts and questioning. My father left me with the same, not only about him, but too much about myself. I hate that grief. He did make those decisions, those decisions have affected my lenses of life. I feel like i am seeing glimpses of truth in pieces. I wish they would mold together more.

That father pain cuts deep. A friend of mine once said this: God is not the reflection of your earthly father, He is the perfection of your earthly father. That makes sense to me. Wherever, however our human fathers falter and fail, He stands without fault.

I had a great dad, one well acquainted with sacrifice for honor, for family, and for the Lord. He passed from death to life nearly 14 yrs ago and I still miss him every.stinkin.day.

So glad you knew a great father that loved you hard! That is such a blessing. So grateful you have those memories to love through as you remember your dad. I know that grief can still sting at times from loss. Death and absence ring the same bell of wounds. I hate that. I love the idea of God as father being the perfection of father. I’m gonna think about that.

I struggle with this one too… and of course it is a recurring theme in my life. Part of it is not having a great father figure in my life, and that I am slowly dealing with and realizing that I can place my trust in God instead. The other part I still don’t really understand is the overwhelming weight on the Father part, but not the Mother. My inner feminist struggles with that immensely (so if anyone wants to respond to that I would love to hear it).

I’m going to come back to this and read your post and the comments more thoroughly.

That’s a really good question Kai. So appreciate your honest thoughts. There is a huge weight as a mother. I think that there is a huge weight as a parent role. Neither one is a great for me. I am in need of knowing both roles for me. I don’t know a good answer to your great question. What have you seen as a mom? Do you look at God differently being a parent? Not being a parent myself, I feel a lack of example. Would love to hear your thoughts on knowing God as a parent from being a parent.

I don’t know what a father is. What the steadfastness of a Father looks like. What dependency on Him looks like, etc. And my heart is very heavy because of it. But I also don’t know how to come to Him as a child. what a child is. how kidz roll. Completely foreign. and I’m still a minor. i want to be a kid, a son/daughter. whatever that means…